Page:A Mainsail Haul - Masefield - 1913.djvu/169

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of seamen sat round a cabin table, and pledged each other in a brew of punch. They sat upon locker tops, on cushions of green velvet gone rusty at the seams. The stern-ports were open at their backs, for it was hot, and the room between decks was foul with the reek of their tobacco. You could tell that the ship was under way by glancing astern at the dull track, like a great snail's track, which she had drawn upon the blue water as she dragged in the light wind. She rolled slightly now and again, making a creaking in her gear, and trembling the silver lamp upon the cabin bulkhead. She was an old ship, you could see by the rot upon the beams. She was foul with a long passage, and the cabin reeked of bilge. The blue arras on the cabin door was wormy with age. The parquetting in her deck was dirty with the marks of sea-boots. It was heaped here and there with a sort of loot,